Friday, December 1, 2017

Yehoshua: Chapter 13

From the
uplifting soaring of poetry, we land back into the nitty gritty of prose. And
discover that the triumphant listing tells only a small part of the story. The
land has not "rested from war" (11: 23). What is left is an uneasy
truce, and an incomplete possession. In this chapter, we are presented with an
alternative map to the victorious presentation of Joshua's victories: the
anti-matter map of what has not been possessed; the negative to define the
positive. Almost every name mentioned in the course of the description of the
battles of 11-12, are here mentioned again, demarcating lines between conquered
and unconquered territory.

As Joshua
grows "Old, coming into days" what he sees are the things undone, a
landscape of incompleteness.

All that is left is to assert
the virtual possession declared in the last two chapters, and alott the land as
though it is already possessed. The assigning rather than possession will be
Joshua's final achievement.]